


The Skeptic

by SnubNosedSilhouette



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Han Solo character study, allusions to canonical major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnubNosedSilhouette/pseuds/SnubNosedSilhouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes (most of the time), Han hates the Force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Skeptic

**Author's Note:**

> The premise for this fic has been percolating in the back of my head for years, so I finally put it down on paper.

Sometimes (most of the time), Han hates the Force.

 

When they are young, just after Yavin, he will admit to being envious of Luke. The things the kid can do by merely tapping into some kind of ubiquitous, universal field of energy are far beyond Han’s scope of experience or ability, and he finds himself (poorly) tamping down irritation and frustration when Luke routinely outflies him during missions.

 

Han has never been very good at letting other people be best at anything.

 

After Bespin, though, his envy begins to morph into distrust. Not of Luke because, well, look at him, but of whatever power he and Vader possess that allows the latter to yank Han’s blaster out of his hand from across the room just moments after deflecting its bolt. How much suffering could the universe have avoided if that shot had been allowed to fly true?

 

Over a year passes after Endor before Luke admits during an alcohol-fueled pseudo- group therapy session that he came within a hair’s breadth of turning to the dark side on the second Death Star. Leia seems to take the announcement in stride (Han suspects she already knew), but he is horrified. The dark side is Vader and Palpatine and everything that has attempted to rip Han’s life into shreds since the day he was born. And young, optimistic, still largely naïve _Luke_ could have become like them?

 

Han leaves the party shortly thereafter. He doesn’t return Leia’s comm message the next day.

 

Three weeks later, Leia announces that she’s pregnant, and Han is both thrilled and unsettled. While (per Luke) Han is as Force-deaf as they come, he has no confidence that a child with Skywalker genes will take after his Solo parent in that respect. He says nothing, though, because this is _his child_ , and he will love his son or daughter even if he’s half terrified of the things this new person could potentially do under the right circumstances.

 

Months later he waits until Leia is out of the room before asking Luke to evaluate Ben for Force sensitivity. It’s a quick mental scan—the baby doesn’t even wake—but Han will re-live those handful of seconds again and again in years to come, wondering how all of their lives would have been different if Luke hadn’t verified that his son had an aptitude for the Force.

 

During the long, comfortable years that follow he wakes up in the same apartment every morning, owns things like carpets and furniture for the first time in his life, and spends his days surrounded by diplomats rather than firefights. They send Ben to Luke because he’s getting older, and because he needs to learn how to control his abilities. They even convince themselves that they’re giving him a choice, that he could always become a pilot or a politician or a kriffing potter after he finishes his training. He doesn’t _have_ to be a Jedi.

Han has a very clear memory of going to bed the night before everything changed, of reflecting on his tidy home and tidy family and thinking that life is good.

 

Foolish, foolish man.

 

What he remembers later about that day comes back in fragments when he least expects it. A wordless Force-driven conversation passing between Luke and Leia until Han screams at both of them to just _tell him what is happening_. Leia’s eyelids so swollen from hours of crying that she can’t open them all the way for a day or two, and Han’s impression that she is walking around both without a heart and without her own face. Chewie’s stony expression as he silently handles all of the things neither of them can face.

 

The decision to leave the Republic and form the Resistance is what begins to destroy them.

 

Han is firmly convinced that an underfunded Resistance will drain needed talent and experience (Leia, Ackbar, Antilles, and most of the followers each has accumulated over the years, just to name a few) away from the worlds that need them the most and the government that is best equipped to fight this new threat. Hell, they don’t even have any capital ships. Leia cannot stand another minute of Senate debates, and packs her bag while she enumerates all of the reasons why the Republic’s new leadership (she was voted out of office weeks after Ben’s defection) will never have the gumption to fight back against the dark side.

 

Han knows the dark side. It terrifies him. Being perfectly honest, he thinks that even the light side of the Force should unnerve everyone these days—what exactly _was_ Luke teaching those children when Ben turned so spectacularly bad under his supervision?

 

Because he has never been able to deny Leia anything for long, Han joins the Resistance in the end. He knows that she never forgets his hesitation, and that she can’t help but think, “Traitor” every time she looks at him. He’s fairly certain he doesn’t want to know what other names have attached themselves to him in her mind since Ben left.

 

He joins her fight, but he does not go back to her bed. Leia stops responding to “General Organa Solo.”

 

Luke has disappeared by that point, and in his capacity as Intelligence chief Han finds it difficult to put more than a perfunctory effort into searching for his brother-in-law. Even then, he only does it for Leia’s sake. Luke and the Force can both stay lost as far as he’s concerned.

 

He leaves on a routine mission, gathering data from operatives who are too deeply embedded to send their transmissions over even an encoded comm line. Layer upon layer of security measures lay between him and the intel, and there is no expectation that he will return for weeks, possibly months. He and Chewie collect the reports from Coruscant, Dathomir, and Hosnia Prime before handing it over to a young hotshot pilot from Yavin who reminds Han all too much of himself twenty years ago. Then they just… don’t go back. It’s easier that way. There are jobs to do—jobs that will help the Resistance, and then jobs that take his mind off of all the responsibilities he once shouldered, and eventually jobs that might just finish him off because he doesn’t have anything much left to live for.

 

He mostly takes the last kind after losing the Falcon.

 

Seeing his ship again is like a punch to the gut, but in a good way. The news that they’re on their way to the Resistance base with a map to Luke is less so. But he agrees to repeat history, to transport a droid containing secret data that is essential to the survival of the Resistance, and to explain the truth of the Force to a skeptical former stormtrooper (he can almost hear Kenobi’s ghost chuckling in the corner at the last bit), at least as far as Maz’s place. He’s willing to do whatever the universe has decided must be done to get the Falcon back, but even the Force can’t manipulate him into seeing Leia again.

 

Of course, the Force has other ideas.

 

He doesn’t mean to get swept up in it all again, he really doesn’t, but history _is_ repeating itself, and he can’t abandon Leia and the Resistance now any more than he could have left Luke to get blown out of the sky back at Yavin.

 

Just before he steps out of the shadows to confront his son Han wonders if the answer to the dark side isn’t the light, but rather the reminder that there is more to life than the Force. No one else in Ben’s life can remind him of that, and Han is tired of running. So he steps out onto the platform and calls to his son.

 

Han hates the Force, but like so many before him he cannot stop loving those who wield it.

 

 

 


End file.
